New York-Presbyterian/Surgery Team/
On April 1, 2025, he attended Dr. Juan Rocca, Director of the New York Presbyterian and Weil Cornell Medicine's Liver Cancer Program, and attended the Surgeons for the Breakdown of Liver Transplants and Liver Surgery, leading the 59-year-old recipient's successful robotic liver transplant surgical team.
Dr. Rocca, who is also an associate professor of clinical surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, said: “This milestone is a testament to the teamwork and advances we have performed with robotic liver surgery since 2022, and our goal is to improve patient outcomes for patients with liver cancer, liver donors and current liver transplant recipients.”
Donizetti Rezende, 59, a patient seen here with surgeon Dr. Juan Rocca, was undergoing his first fully robotic liver transplant in New York.
The surgical team included a physician assistant, a nurse, anesthesiologist and a general surgeon, with three surgeons present. Dr. Rocca, Dr. Benjamin Samstein, Chief of Liver Transplant and Liver Surgery in the Surgery Division of New York Presbyterian/
“We are very proud of our entire team for their collaboration and commitment to moving the field forward for all transplant patients,” says Dr. Robert Brown, Chief of the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at New York-Presbyterian.
Robotic surgery is the cutting edge technology in which surgeons operate robots just a few feet away from the patient. In a nine-hour procedure, Dr. Rocca used his hands and feet to precisely control the instruments that had been slit through five small holes in his abdomen and sewn together, using his hands and feet. The team then removed the patient's illness liver, prepared the container and reconnected the new liver from the deceased donor after Dr. Rocca robotically cut and fixed the vessel.
Dr. Juan Rocca sits on a robot console and shows how to operate the robot remotely.
“I'm so happy. Dr. Rocca and all the doctors, nurses and staff did an amazing job. They saved my life. “I've already been walking a mile around the hospital floor. The incisions are so small, so fast and so healed. Every day I feel strong.”
Robotic liver transplant surgery can increase the accuracy of challenging and complex procedures due to the risk of bleeding from the body's largest internal organs. Traditional “open” liver transplant surgery requires a large incision in the abdomen, usually requiring 8-10 hours of surgery, blood transfusion, 10 days of hospitalization and up to six months of recovery.
Robotic liver surgery involves explanting and transplanting the liver in the lower abdomen using a small 1-centimeter incision where the robot arm is inserted and a small incision similar to a cesarean incision. It is expected to lead to faster recovery, shorter hospitalizations and potentially fewer complications.
“This surgery and others are like coming to a time when long hospitalizations with severe illnesses can become a thing of the past,” says Dr. Samstein, a surgical professor at Weill Cornell Medicine.
New York-Presbyterian is the largest transplant program in the United States to perform the most organ transplants in 2024. Focusing on the integration of cutting-edge surgical techniques, NewYork-Presbyterian is the first and largest laparoscopic donor program in the nation, offering procedures to ensure that live donors receive minimal invasive surgery. The liver program has it Grown to focus on robotic surgerytransitioning from laparoscopic liver surgery to becoming the first robotic liver donor program in New York, and as of July 2023, all liver donor surgery was performed robotically.
“These changes in surgical interventions are transformative medicines,” says Dr. Samstein. “We can support our team's expertise, experience and these technologies to embarrass more patients by sharing our innovation goals.”
